I've long thought we should adopt "Believe" as our national anthem. Imagine if every schoolchild in America had to learn how to sing that.

If you're seized with insomnia some night try to tune into a low-wattage AM radio station with a talk show that has a call-in portion. All the valuable intel gets passed along at 3 Am on a random Wednesday morning.

The German shepherd mix also never really smelled, so we wouldn't bathe her that much, except when she came back from the kennel, where we would put her when we would take a vacation. The black lab we have now is like a male teenager who stinks and he gets bathed all the time. He likes it, thankfully. (Speaking as…

We had a German shepherd mix who we got as a puppy and never farted and she lived to be 16 1/2. She was always with us and she was odor-free. We have a new puppy now, a black lab mix, and he farts all the time. To the point where it will clear a room. It's a wonder that I still have a functioning nose, the stench is…

It's something my dog would grab off a sidewalk and I'd have to pry out of his jaw. Cigarette butt, part of a chicken wing, random piece of plastic...if I find out my dog is consulting for Guy Fieri and not sharing the proceeds he's staying in his crate for the day.

After I posted my question to you I happened to talk to my sister, who has school-age children whose friends visit all the time. She lives quite close to a firing range (in MA) and you can hear the guns going off from her backyard. I learned that this IS a common question, and a lot of the locals visit the firing…

I think it is amazing but to him and his family it seems unremarkable. I get the feeling that this was not that uncommon at the time, the post-Civil War era, when the Federal government retreated and the newly freed black folk in the South had to fend for themselves in the face of a ferocious backlash. Just imagine…

Whenever I read about anyone with even the remotest connection to Judaism returning to Europe before, say, 1938, I always feel a sense of dread. I've read several books, social histories, biographies, where some person is in England or America or Canada and they decide to return to Europe. It usually doesn't end well.

Yes, but in the post-Civil War era the Federal government basically withdrew in the 1870s and left the South to its own devices, so there was Jim Crow and a kind of 19th-century version of feudalism, but at the same time the reservation system really kicked into high gear. Cruel as it was the reservation lands were…

Jen (and I call her that too) my advice would be to keep him away from fellow Boston native Mark Wahlberg. Let him hang out with Donnie, who has not aged well. Or let him hang out with me, because I have not aged well either.

Matt Damon?! Is that you? Is this a blind item? Who is your friend's ex-wife? And why are you still in touch? Wouldn't you side with your bro and keep the ex-wife out of the picture?

Have you ever had cause to actually ask these questions?

My black husband's great-grandmother was Native American, I forget from which group, and early on in our relationship I asked him how she and her husband met. They lived in the South and (he told me) blacks would sometimes move onto Indian reservations to escape some of the grinding racism and Jim Crow-ism of the…

Well, home school and don't take the subway. Ever. I have a strange auto-immune disorder where I can't be vaccinated against measles. I've had measles three times, as an adult, and it's not fun. So keep little non-vaxxed Snowflake off my crowded subway car. Homeschool and take a car service for his/her various…

I had a coworker who swore by the Coke in a can remedy. Problem for him was everyone in the office knew he was kind of a party bro and we were all in cubicles so when we heard the crack of the can opening we knew he had had a fun night. He might as well have just pulled out a pint of Old Granddad from his top drawer…

Some of the loons in Congress are pretty dapper, if you consider a single-breasted navy blue suit with a crisp white button-down shirt and a red tie with a vaguely patriotic theme appropriate. Gotta go; I'm off to a party and I have to figure out which "Nantucket Red" pair of shorts I want to wear.

Are you in New York? Bring the Lava Chocolate Cupcakes, which sound amazing, to our building's Fourth of July party. (I googled them; it sounds like there's a little diabetes in every bite! As there should be, when baking.)

That looks delicious (depending on the meat, vegetables, sauce, and pie crust.) I know what I'm having for dinner tonight, even though it's 90 degrees here in NY today.

I can't really cook but I can bake, it's a weird skill that I have. I'm not very good with cooking intuition but with baking you need to follow the instructions to the letter, otherwise food chaos ensues. I also come from a family of engineers, so I have a genetic disposition to following instructions with no…

My guess is they're somewhere where nudity is prohibited, and they're technically not nude, just clownish.